It has come to my attention that the ancient moldy “venerable” webcomic “Sinfest” still exists – and has gone full terf. This isn’t news because it happened some time ago, apparently.
The last I gazed upon its weird and copious pages was in art school close to twenty years ago. At that time it struck me as being penned by a very virtuous hand, something of Walt Kelly’s talent in the lines, but wallowing in unoriginality on a perverse level. Like the MCs were basically Calvin & Hobbes, except Calvin dressed like Bloom County’s Steve Dallas and Hobbes was a hot chick (TM) with a whale tail, baby doll tee, and what would become Karen hair. The comic veered between slam poetry about weed and endless tedious discourse about xtianity that was inscrutable enough to come out a total wash. I could not tell you if the artist was an atheist or an xtian.
That was then and I won’t give the creep traffic to see what it looks like now. But from googling some discourse about it, some coincidences emerge. The writer went swerf circa Elevatorgate, and went terf more recently. Is this somebody who went with the progressive side of atheism but then followed people like OB out the terf hatch? Or are they just british and this is a nothing?
Weird world, man.
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Never heard of it, but I guess now there’s nothing to get out of it anymore, so I won’t spend a moment in regret.
I understand that the cartoonist is a Japanese American living in California, i.e. not British.
I would have thought that 20 years ago was early Sinfest (bad – edgy misogynist humour, etc). Middle period Sinfest, with character development, and gentle poking of fun at religion, was the good bit. Late period Sinfest started off with a swerve to radical feminism (though it took me a long time to conclude that it wasn’t a straw feminism), with SWERFism, TERFism and more lately freeze peach advocacy, supporting Trump’s coup, and anti-vaxx. If anyone wants to hate-read it go to r/sinfest. (There’s also a TVTropes forum.)
Nowdays Sinfest gets compared to Stonetoss and Ben Garrison.
Ishida started out being “edgy” (racism, sexism, etc.) then changed for a while. Apparently he’s easily swayed, either by money, by ignorant ideology, or both.
Aside from Bendib and a couple of other political cartoonists, I’ve stopped reading webcomics. Unless something original comes up, it’s run its course as a medium.
Actually, Sinfest is already out of its SWERF and TERF phase by now. Currently it has gonne pretty much alt-right and wallows in anti-mask and anti-vaxx rethoric, complaints about “wokeness”, excuses to downplay/deny the Capitol Insurrection… the works. The webcomic has even defended the toxic masculinity that it used to criticize (by the way, I was never a follower, by chance I just recently became fascinated by the whole trainwreck).
Last I checked, the author also seemed to believe that the biggest internet companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google control the world.
Of course, those companies are responsible for various atrocities and atrocious qualities, but “Anti-SJW” types act like the companies are THE ENTIRE INTERNET in almost all of their grievances with Facebook-twitter-google, just to give as much pushback as they can.
hilarious deets , thanks. doesn’t seem like it lines up that neatly with our timeline, so most likely not one of ours. at least that’s nice.
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I stopped reading it years ago when it went TERF and it sounds like that was the right time. Viewpoints change over time regularly but Ishida seems to be swerving all over the place.
I used to read Sinfest, and tended to go “right on” to his attacks on militarism and exploitation of women.
But I discovered from the forum he created on radical feminism that he was solidly in the camp of TERFs and SWERFs, which led me to re-examine his strip. What started to bother me was the way the characters were dehumanized to to mere cardboard cut-outs, especially the women. In particular, the strips that related to prostitution showed the women as helpless, agency-less victims. It was like those Victorian-era morality stories where the evil mustache-twirling villain corrupts and destroys the defenseless, pure, and virginial (white!) girl. To my way of thinking, he denies the humanity of both the women and the men.
Once I started seeing it, I could no longer unsee it, and I could no longer follow his webcomic.
Not hered orf it either here.
Swerf / SWERF = ???
@2. another stewart : Nowdays Sinfest gets compared to Stonetoss and Ben Garrison.
Also never herad of.
^ .. & doesn’t seem ike I’m missing much.
ben garrison is a hilaribad trump fan political cartoonist who brought joy to our hearts recently by contracting covid. haven’t heard about him dying yet, so maybe he’s just going to be crippled for life by it. fingers crossed. SWERF= sex worker exclusionary radical feminist, anti-porn anti-prostitution crusader types. like the FOSTA-SESTA legislation, do a lot more harm than good in the name of protecting people.
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@ ^ Great American Satan : Cheers. 🙂
I used to follow Sinfest. Abandoned it long ago.
I just checked: now it’s added anti-vax to its repertoire. Done, done, done.